


Day 2 - "Pick Who Dies" (2.1)

by fanfictiongreenirises



Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aquariums, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Kidnapping, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises
Summary: "The tank, Bruce estimated, probably spanned about five by three metres. There was another side of the room that he could see through it, and the door that would hopefully lead out. There were little plants littered all over the tank, all giant and plastic. There was even a little filter at the top, making gurgling noises – it was turned on, with no water to pump through it."Bruce and Dick get kidnapped.No 2. IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY“Pick Who Dies”| Collars |Kidnapped
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947217
Comments: 31
Kudos: 233
Collections: Dick & Bruce, everybody loves dick





	Day 2 - "Pick Who Dies" (2.1)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone's having a nice angsty Whumptober =D This one was super fun to write and I'm pretty excited to be sharing it ^~^ it also has a second part, which I'll be posting tomorrow for Day 3.
> 
> Warnings: suicide references, attempted suicide, thoughts about drowning
> 
> Disclaimer: don't own DC (bc if I did, this is the food you'd all be eating lmao)

THIS FANFICTION IS HOSTED ON **ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN** , WHERE YOU CAN READ IT FOR **FREE**. IF YOU’RE READING THIS ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE, IT WAS POSTED THERE **WITHOUT** THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT.

Bruce was in what he would almost definitely consider a giant _fishtank_ when he came to. He lay there for a moment, blinking groggily as he tried to remember back to the gala that had run a little too late, the car blowing a tyre halfway down the road in the middle of the storm. He'd taken Dick along with him as they jogged back down the street to find somewhere that would have better reception.

Unfortunately, it appeared that things had not gone according to plan.

Dick. Where was Dick? Bruce was the only inhabitant of the tank – living, that was. Beneath his feet – his now bare feet – were the typical fishtank pebbles, but they appeared to have grown to match the container. Each was about the size of Bruce’s hand.

The tank, Bruce estimated, probably spanned about five by three metres. There was another side of the room that he could see through it, and the door that would hopefully lead out. There were little plants littered all over the tank, all giant and plastic. There was even a little filter at the top, making gurgling noises – it was turned on, with no water to pump through it.

That was when Bruce realised that wall separating him and the rest of the room went all the way up to the ceiling. There was no climbing up and escaping over the side. And _then_ he realised that the gurgling sound that he’d been attributing to the filter was only partially because of that – the rest of the noise was coming from the wall behind him, and it sounded like water.

The door opened, and a handcuffed Dick, stripped of his dress shirt, jacket, and shoes, was shoved inside. Bruce instantly went to the tank wall, needing to check him over.

It was lucky that the tank seemed to have been cleaned recently; Bruce could see perfectly through the glass.

Dick was shoved onto his knees in the centre of the room, and three people entered after him. The first thing that Bruce noticed about them – the thing that you couldn’t _not_ notice, really – was the outrageous suits they were wearing.

They seemed to have chosen a colour – there was an orange person, a lavender, and a teal blue. All three clashed horribly with each other, and with the accessories they wore with them: a giant Guy Fawkes mask, with the face roughly painted to match their suit, and a top hat (same colour) with a flower crown around the rim.

“Hey, Bruce,” Dick said cheerily. “We got captured by the fashion police—” He let out a wheeze as one of them – Orange – kicked an orange boot into his stomach.

Bruce clenched his jaw. “What do you want?” he demanded.

They ignored him, even as Bruce pounded his fists on the thick glass wall. There _had_ to be some weakness in it, or somewhere that the air was coming through. He just had to find it—but _no_ , he was _Bruce Wayne_. He couldn’t strategically punch this thing and escape on his own.

Bruce wished there was a clock in this room. Surely the kids – or _Alfred_ – would’ve noticed that they were late. They’d been running late even _before_ they’d left. Had their driver started the trek along the road for cell signal himself, or was he in on this whole thing?

One of them had procured a little round table from somewhere. Bruce couldn’t see what its contents were until they moved.

On it was a single gun, a little ziplock bag with what appeared to be pills, and a knife.

The teal one stood behind Dick as he kneeled in front of the table, one hand wrapped around his throat. Bruce could see the wary confusion when his eyes met Dick’s, and he hoped that his own showed reassurance. He hoped it didn’t betray the frantic beating of his heart.

“We’re going to play a little game,” Orange said.

“Oh my god,” Dick murmured, “what are you, Joker wannabes? Just make the ransom call already and then we can all get out of here.”

Another kick, this time to his side. Bruce heard him suck in a breath, and his fingers tightened at his sides.

“Dick,” he said, hoping the wall wasn’t thick enough to make him inaudible. He got his answer when Dick peered up at him. “Stop talking.”

“You should listen to Pops, Richie,” Lavender crooned, leaning down. A hand went to Dick’s hair, yanking it back to make him tilt his head up. “Actually, there is no ransom call.”

Bruce’s heart sank. It was never good when there was no ransom call.

Teal picked up the villain monologue. “As we were saying, tonight you’re going to play a game for us.” The gurgling of water behind the wall got louder, and Bruce suddenly had a _very_ bad feeling about this. “Richie, sweetie,” surely Teal was using a modulator, because no one’s voice could go _that_ sickly sweet, “you have to choose.”

“Choose?” Dick said, frowning. “Between those three on the table?”

That was when the gurgling was suddenly no longer just _gurgling pipes_ , but actual water that was surging into the tank. Bruce could see it filling up between the gaps in the pebbles, before wetting his bare feet.

But he couldn’t do anything right now, not when these people had Dick in such a vulnerable position with so many weapons in front of them. If they’d been here in their costumes, it would’ve been a different matter. Dick could’ve broken free by now, taken out all three of these amateurs. But instead, they were _stuck_ , waiting for rescue. Any attempts of freedom _needed_ to look textbook and dumb luck at best.

“That tank,” Orange said, “is going to fill up _right_ to the top. And your Daddy’s gonna be a big floating fish, all belly up and dead.”

“But we’re not _that_ mean,” Teal interjected. “We’re giving you a _choice_. You get to pick who dies.”

The sinking in Bruce’s gut worsened as the realisation emerged on Dick’s face.

“We’ll release you from your handcuffs once we’re out of the room. Just to be on the safe side. Who knows what you rich kids do when you’re desperate.”

“And Richie?” Lavender waited until Dick made eye contact with her. “There are two bullets in the gun. Just in case you try to shoot our lovely fish tank in a _very_ misguided attempt to escape.”

“Toodles, my lovelies,” Orange said with a little finger wave, the first to head out the door.

Teal and Lavender followed only after making sure Dick was reeling from another few blows and thus unable to make a run for the door.

By the time Dick got his breath back – which only took a handful of deep breaths – the water was swirling around Bruce’s shins.

“Dick,” Bruce called. “Listen to me.” He didn’t care if they were listening or not, he just had to get _Dick_ to listen before he did anything stupid. “Hinges.”

Now was Bruce’s chance – they were gone. He looked around for a sharp edged pebble (there were none) and in the end, settled for one that had the pointiest smooth end. With all the force he had, Bruce slammed it into the glass wall.

There was a loud _thud_ , but otherwise absolutely no impact. Not even a crack. Bruce tried again.

“There are no hinges, B,” Dick said, having already headed over to the doorway.

Dick’s hands were still tightly cuffed behind him. As he neared the door, there was a buzzing noise and Dick let out a pained grunt as what Bruce presumed to be an electric current swept through him via the cuffs.

Then, his cuffs gave a soft click, and came loose. Dick immediately shook his hands free of them, grabbing them with one hand while rubbing at his wrist with the other. He brought it over to the table with their other ‘supplies’.

Then he glanced at the water in Bruce’s tank. His face reflected what Bruce knew – it wasn’t good. He had about another five minutes before the water would be above his head, another eight on top of that before the entire tank was full.

Bruce moved on from trying to crack the wall to examining the pipe through which the water was coming from. The flow was pretty strong – he doubted he’d be able to block it with any of the rocks, particularly if there were holes in the blockage. He tried anyway.

Bruce stuffed the pipe as well as he could, fishing around for decent sized pebbles that fit against each other nicely. As a final touch, he tore some of the plastic plants up to fill up the holes, and then held it in place with all the force in his body.

He could feel the pressure of the water building, but any time he bought them would be enough.

Dick, meanwhile, had examined the gun and was now sniffing at whatever was in the pills. As Bruce watched, he grimaced.

“Sleeping pills, I think,” he said. For the benefit of their cover, he added, “Think I was prescribed them at some point.”

Bruce nodded, and was about to say something when the rocks that he was pushing onto gave an almighty shove _back_ , and water burst through little cracks. One pebble went flying out, throwing Bruce out of the way just as the entire thing fell to pieces, water flooding back into the tank at what seemed to be double the speed it’d been before.

“Dick,” Bruce said. “It’s okay.”

“Bruce, shut up,” Dick snapped. He was now looking at the cuffs, peering at them. “I’m not going to just _let_ you die.”

The water was up to Bruce’s waist now, and rising with every breath he took. Bruce filled his pockets with a few handy stones, just in case there were opportunities higher up.

Bruce watched as Dick paced, fiddling with the handcuffs. He let out another muffled grunt as it apparently shocked him once again, before throwing the thing at the wall and looking at Bruce a little desperately.

“Screw it,” he said, and got the gun.

Before Bruce could say anything, before he could _do_ anything but try to _breathe_ as Dick undid the safety, Dick fired a shot at where the door would’ve had hinges, had it been a regular door.

The bullet ricocheted, only doing minor damage to the door. Dick ducked, swearing, and Bruce watched as the bullet went sideways and hit an adjacent wall.

“Dick— _Dick_ ,” he yelled, determined to be _heard_. “ _Breathe_. You need to calm down and _think_.”

“We don’t have _time_ , Bruce,” Dick murmured.

Bruce couldn’t hear the words he was muttering, but now that Dick was looking at the contents on the table again, he could read Dick’s lips as Dick talked under his breath.

Bruce was now needing to tread water. He kept his heart rate even, feeling around both the glass wall and the solid wall behind him, looking for any little chinks, _anything_ , that might help him.

It was all smooth. Bruce tried knocking on the solid wall, to see if any of it was hollow.

Dick was gingerly holding the knife when he glanced back down at his son. “Hey!” Dick called. “What’re the rules? Does he go free once I die? What if I stab myself and pass out?”

For a moment, there was silence, and Bruce thought that no one was going to be answering. Then, there was the crackle of overhead speakers, audible even over the roaring of the water.

“Once you die,” all three voices said at once.

“Figures,” Dick said. Then, his head poked back up. “Can I have a glass of water, at least? To help down all these pills?”

“You want water?” the three voices said again. They laughed eerily. “Here. Have water.”

And then the _other_ side of the room was being filled with water, waves forming as it rushed in through another set of pipes. It kept filling until it hit Dick’s knees, before stopping slowly.

Bruce’s tank was now past half full. He wondered whether he should just swim down to the bottom and fill his pockets and pants with pebbles, take the choice out of Dick’s hands. But the part of him that was Batman, that _survived_ , refused to think that this was a dead end.

There _had_ to be a way out of this.

Dick had gone over to the pipe, to see if there was anything he could work out from that.

“We’re getting _bored_.” It seemed that the voices, having used the speaker system once, had decided to be chatty. “How about this: you’ll both die if you don’t hurry up and choose in the next minute.”

Dick’s side of the room began filling with water once again. Bruce’s slowed a little and Dick’s rose higher and higher. The ziplock bag with pills had been left open – they now floated around, slowly dissolving into the water. The gun and knife slipped off the table and sunk down as the table rose.

“Me,” Bruce said, choking a little as water entered his mouth. He coughed, and then tried again. “Me. I pick me. Please.” He wasn’t above begging, not in a situation like this.

“Not your choice, Brucie,” the voices sung at him.

Dick was spluttering a little, fighting to tread water now that he wasn’t being given the time Bruce had been to acclimatise to the rise. Bruce waded to the wall, putting his hands on the glass. He was still higher up than Dick, but Dick was rapidly catching up.

“Dick,” he shouted. “Dick, hey, look at me. Use the walls for help.”

Dick made his way over to the wall now, hands scrabbling as the waves of water kept sending him tumbling. He was saying something around the coughed breaths. Bruce frowned as he tried to read his lips, but he was moving around too much, coughs breaking up his words.

And then he got one: _sorry_.

There was only one reason for Dick to be saying that. Bruce thumped his fist against the glass, and then grabbed one of the rocks out of his pocket and used that, but it was no use – either Dick couldn’t hear him, or was ignoring him.

Because Dick was now diving down. It was _metres_ down from Bruce, where he could now touch the ceiling. Bruce felt around the corners of the room, scraping at the walls with the stone in his hand. He _needed_ a way out of here; they’d run out of time. _Dick_ had run out of time.

He glanced down to where Dick had grabbed both the gun and the knife, and he knew that it was in case the gun had gotten too waterlogged to work properly.

The water had reached the top now, but he still had enough air to _scream_ as Dick placed the gun into his mouth and closed his eyes.

* * *

Bruce bolted upright, vomiting up what felt like an entire ocean. He felt hands tilting him to the side, allowing the water to drain out of his mouth. He coughed until his throat felt like it was scraped raw, and once he had finally caught his breath, he felt a bone-deep tiredness he’d rarely felt.

Bruce’s eyes flew open, and he jerked upright. His head throbbed as he did so, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut as the world teetered around him.

“Whoa, easy there, c’mon, B.” Tim. That was Tim’s voice.

“Dick?” he said, forcing the word out even though he was dreading the answer. “Is he…”

If he were alive now because of Dick’s choices, because Dick had decided that Bruce’s life was worth more than his, because he was a _hero_ and he couldn’t let Bruce die, not when he could do something about it… Bruce didn’t know how he’d be able to _live_ with that. His stomach threatened to upend itself once again at the memory of the gun in Dick’s mouth, his fingers tightening on the trigger.

“He’s… well, he’s got a stab wound, but other than that, he’s fine.”

Bruce’s eyes snapped to Tim’s. “What?”

“Yeah, look.” Tim nodded his head over to the other cot in the Cave.

Bruce turned, half dreading that this was the dream, that any second now, he was going to wake back up in that tank and see Dick’s brain matter floating around the other side of the room.

Dick was lying in the other cot, an oxygen mask covering his face and his torso wrapped in bandages. But his chest was rising and falling as he breathed, and Bruce couldn’t stop staring.

“Stab wound?” Bruce forced his mind to work, to _think_ , but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the signs of life.

Tim nodded. “Yeah, uh…” He looked uncomfortable, and that was when Bruce realised that Tim had to have gone there _alone_ and witnessed all this by himself.

“Tim,” he said, turning in the bed until his legs swung off the sides. “You did good tonight.”

Tim huffed a humourless laugh. “You don’t even know what happened there,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” Bruce told him. “You rescued us. You’re the reason we made it out.”

Tim twisted the fabric of his sleeves around as he glanced quickly at Dick’s cot. “Actually, you were just lying there when I arrived. The paramedics did CPR on you to get you breathing and you threw up a whole bunch of water then too. They called Alfred in.”

Bruce let this knowledge settle into his bones. And then he tugged Tim forward into a hug, because he looked like he needed one, especially with all those worried looks he kept shooting at Dick’s still figure, and hell, _Bruce_ needed one. He needed to _give_ a hug.

Tim let out a squeak when Bruce pulled him in, arms going around Bruce’s torso gingerly. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, face pressed into Bruce’s chest. “I thought you guys were both _dead_. The water around Dick was _completely_ red, like he’d bled out entirely, and—” he seemed to notice Bruce’s grip tightening, and changed topics, “and I’m sorry I didn’t get there faster.”

“It’s okay,” Bruce said. “We’re alive.” He would have nightmares for _weeks_ , but that was a small price to pay. “How long were we in there?”

Tim pulled away, settling back into his own chair. “Alfred called at the gala at quarter to one; they said you guys had left fifteen minutes ago. So one of their staff went looking and found the limo by the side of the road. The driver was long gone – cops reckon he was in on it. We started looking for you at one, after they told us about the limo. Found you guys at three, which was,” Tim glanced at his wrist, “half an hour ago.”

“Hey,” Bruce placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder, “good job. I mean it. I’ll look at the details in the morning.”

Tim didn’t seem to light up under the praise like he normally did, and this time, Bruce couldn’t really blame him – he knew all too well how self-blame manifested, try as he might to keep it from happening in Robin. But there was a fine line between blaming yourself and being ignorant to your faults; sometimes it was hard to toe it.

“Are you going to head up?” Tim asked.

Bruce shook his head, but didn’t respond. He stood up shakily, but found his legs much more solid beneath him than he’d expected. He stepped over to the adjacent cot, finally able to tuck his hand into Dick’s and feel the warmth of life coming from him, put a finger over his pulse to keep track of his resting heart rate, stare at his head that had no gaping bullet holes in it.

“If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay too,” Tim said, curling up in the chair.

Bruce glanced at him. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?” he asked, despite knowing that he would make any excuses Tim wanted him to make to his teacher.

Tim shrugged. “Turns out my family got kidnapped last night and almost drowned,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!
> 
> This is [cross-posted on tumblr](https://fanfictiongreenirises.tumblr.com/post/630843820363464704/day-2-pick-who-dies-21), and once the sequel is out, I'll link that here as well.
> 
> EDIT: [here's the sequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789614)


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